


Hell's Embrace

by allthebeautifulthings9828



Series: October Fic Fest [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1860s, 19th Century, Alternate Universe - 19th Century, Alternate Universe - Historical, American Civil War, American History, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cain's Promise, Comfort/Angst, Curses, Demons, F/M, Feels, Ficlet Collection, Historical, Horses, Intimacy, Knight(s) of Hell, Love, Mark of Cain, Missouri - Freeform, Non-Sexual Intimacy, One Shot, One Shot Collection, POV Colette Mullen, Promises, Romance, Tenderness, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 01:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4941307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebeautifulthings9828/pseuds/allthebeautifulthings9828
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fighting in the American Civil War makes it difficult for Cain to keep his promise to Colette. He comes back to their Missouri homestead with stolen horses one night and Colette suspects he's been in combat. No one knows the love of her life is a Knight of Hell and no one knows how he suffers in order to keep his promise. Denying his urges to kill makes Cain incredibly sick, leaving him to rely on his wife to see it through. They're making plans for after the war, but how long can a Knight of Hell really stay with a human lady like her?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hell's Embrace

February 1863  
Jasper Springs, Missouri

Dim light of the dying day hit him just right from where Colette stood at the window watching the shadowy figure atop the crest of the ridge. Cain resembled a knight from days long dead, mounted there on his horse. He held ropes tethering four other riderless horses with enough length to keep them from getting restless.

Colette moved away from the window, letting the curtain fall, and grabbed her shawl from the peg by the door. She swung the garment around her shoulders as he emerged into the gathering darkness. Hooves on the ground told her of her husband's approach even though she couldn't see him anymore in the shadow of the ridge. Lifting her skirt, she headed to the fenced pasture and opened the gate in preparation for the homecoming. Ears pointed up in alertness on her two mares and one of them let out a huff.

The ground vibrated beneath her feet and she heaved the gate as far open as it could possibly go, pulling her far enough away from the path of the new arrivals to keep her from getting trampled. Cain cantered his mount alongside them and herded them toward the mouth of the pasture. Wind swooshed past Colette and pulled at her long skirts as the horses galloped into the pasture. Once the last chestnut animal cleared the gate, she pushed with all her strength to close them in safely.

"Evening, darlin'," Cain's voice floated in the darkness. He swung a leg around and dismounted.

She gave him a pretty smile, knowing he could see it even in the dark with his preternatural eyesight. "Busy stealing horses from the Yankees again, hm? Fine animals you brought me this time. They should fetch a pretty price."

"I think we'll be keeping these," he replied as he dragged the saddle and blanket off his horse's back to throw onto the fence rail.

Colette cocked an eyebrow and approached. "We will?"

Before he came to her, Cain led his naked horse into the pasture with the others already enjoying a supper of hay and fresh water. "People are losing everything to the war, especially Missouri folks like us. We're gonna have to start over again after all this is over and I'm not letting you go hungry or want for a pretty dress." He drew up close in that scratchy Confederate uniform and slid his arms around her waist. "Two of those horses I brought you are Kentucky studs with prizewinning pedigrees. I believe we'll go into horse breeding, darlin'."

"Oh my," she said, resting her hands on his chest. "You didn't steal them in Missouri, did you? Home guard will be looking for them. No breeder's going to let them go this easily."

"No one's gonna come looking for this horseflesh."

Colette studied his eyes, barely visible in the darkness, glittering against the candlelight spilling out of the house. She knew that cold timbre in his voice. Uncomfortable ideas surfaced in her thoughts and reminded her that her husband wasn't altogether human, bound by a human sense of morality. She had to be his moral core as well as his wife, companion, and lover. Separation in the war sometimes sent him slipping down a dangerous slope when it became evident that a cavalry captain like him never actually killed any Yankees. His soldiers did the killing for him, which allowed him to keep the promise to his wife never to take life again.

She dropped her eyes from his and stared at the brass buttons on his uniform for a moment, thinking. Her hands slid inside of his rough wool coat. Heat radiated from his body despite the damp chill in the Missouri night air. Although it felt good to her frozen hands, she knew there was an unnatural cause for her husband's temperature. Her eyes flickered up to the shadow of his face again.

"You've got the bloodlust fever." It wasn't open to debate. She knew it for fact.

"I didn't act on it."

"Then why can't you tell me how you got those horses for our new enterprise? Tell me true, demon."

Shoulders dropping suddenly, Cain's face fell a moment later and his forehead rested against hers. "Don't call me that," he whispered, pleading. "I vowed to you that I would never kill again and I meant my vow. I haven't acted on the bloodlust fever since. It causes me pain the more I fight it but losing your forgiveness would be exponentially more painful. You must know that."

A sigh passed between Colette's lips. She didn't pull away but drew into his warmth. "Yes, I do know that," she admitted barely above a whisper.

"The fever brought me home tonight," he admitted, still holding her close to his chest. "I rode for two days from Kentucky to you because I didn't think I could withstand the bloodlust much longer. It's fading now - my fever - but it boiled out of control not two days ago."

"Come indoors," Colette decided with her arm sliding around his waist and walking along at his side.

A story began to unfold from Cain's lips as he allowed his wife to guide him back to their cabin. The horses occasionally neighed and stomped behind the couple as they grew acquainted with one another. Colette would deal with them by daylight. For the moment, she needed to look after the hellfire fever still raging in her husband, whispering and crooking its finger to tempt him into killing once again. If she demanded his morality in exchange for her love and forgiveness, she needed to help him through it.

"I took a company with me around Bowling Green because we'd heard rumors of Yankees setting fire to homes of Confederate loyalists. Most of the people left in the area are women and children - widows and orphans. We arrived ready for a fight and a fight is what we found."

Colette's limbs tensed as she pushed Cain over the cabin's threshold and peeled off his coat. He'd have to be put to bed until it passed. She let her mind nitpick the little details of bathing him in vinegar water to draw out the fever and rubbing his skin with lavender oil to calm him rather than letting the potential calamities of his story take root in her brain. He didn't resist as she plopped him into the chair at the kitchen table, which sat far from the hearth fire.

"Give me your feet," she said as she knelt on the floor, preparing to pull off his knee-high boots.

He obeyed without missing a beat of his story. "We encountered a Yankee cavalry detachment making ready to fire an estate. It was a plantation, really. My boys, they wanted the papers to know us and spread fear about us among the Yankees in the county. I saw no harm in it. We had the advantage of surprise, so I gave the order to attack, and my boys easily overtook the enemy. They tried routing us and that was when I noticed a few of them breaking into the big house. A woman lived there alone with some children. She lunged at one of the Yankees with a knife and there was a struggle that ended in her being shot through the heart. They killed a woman, darlin'. They orphaned her passel of children right under their own roof."

Colette shuddered, imagining the scene. She pulled off his second boot and rose from the floor to set them outside of the front door. Cool night air revived her for the moment, allowing her to return to the kitchen table to hear the rest of his story.

"In the course of the fighting, things became confused. I ended up in the stables taking on two Yankees on my own, which isn't difficult for me, but I wasn't willing to let my boys see my powers." Cain shook his head and stared into the empty middle distance as he remembered it. "Hand to hand combat like a human triggered the bloodlust fever. It spiked there in the stables and I was about to give in--"

Stopping suddenly at the bottom of the stairs, Colette was about to go and fetch her husband clean clothes from their bedroom until he made that confession. Then she spun on her heels and gripped the stair railing until her knuckles turned white.

Cain, who leaned over and rubbed the strain from his eyes, peered at her through the curtain of his wavy hair streaked with silver. "Outside, someone through a torch through the stable's doorway, and then another one burst through the back window. My boys didn't know I was in there and they were trying to fire out the Yankee soldiers. Of course the fire didn't hurt me. I never feel so at home as I do surrounded by fire, but I couldn't let anyone know that. I ran outside just before the flames consumed the rear escape from the stables. I took the horses with me before they were killed in the fire too."

Peeling one of her hands away from the railing, she pressed her fingers to her mouth and looked away.

"So as you can see, nobody will be coming for the horseflesh outside, darlin'," added Cain after a moment of tense quiet. "None of my boys were hurt beyond a few minor injuries and I didn't do the great harm that you fear so much. I've been paying for it ever since with this damned fever but we know it'll eventually go away."

Colette didn't know what made her do it but she abandoned the stairs and returned to her husband's side. She stood only a head taller than him where he sat at the kitchen table. Wrapping her arms around him allowed him to lie his head on the soft mounds of her chest. For a long time she didn't do anything but carefully comb her fingers through his hair. Feverish sweat matted the underlayer to his skin. She knew he felt sicker than any human could but he never complained about his suffering. He never bemoaned the fact that he'd been forbidden from killing, which was what came so naturally to him. He did those things for her, showing her every day of her life that she meant more to him than his violent nature.

It was easy to say if he loved her, he would deny his demonic species and everything that made him do, but it was quite another to actually follow through with it. He'd had a perfect opportunity to kill those Yankees without being seen and he didn't take it. Or so he said. She pondered the possibility that he wasn't telling the truth, that he had actually killed in that plantation, but then she realized if he had, the fever wouldn't be ravaging his body at that moment. It was an unfortunate side effect of suppressing his curse – his bloodlust.

"Your forgiveness is worth more to me than any exhilaration borne of spilling blood," he said so calmly as if reciting poetry into her bosom rather than talking of murder.

"Will you truly be content breeding horses for the rest of my life?" She couldn't say for the rest of his life, knowing he was immortal, and that immortality read in her mind like another curse. "Will we be enough together on a horse farm of our own design without children?"

"Of course," Cain reassured her. His thumb lightly caressed the bit of exposed skin at her wrist. Such gentility from the fabled father of murder.

"You're the only one I ever loved," she said quietly, speaking as if she was giving him a reward for proving once again that she could trust him. "I don't care what you say. There is still a human man inside of you and that human man wrestles your demon into submission every day. If you could see your strength the way I see it, you would never question yourself again."

"If I lost you, I don't know if I could keep my promise," he admitted under his breath.

Colette kissed the top of his head. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Neither am I," he whispered back.


End file.
